There is plenty of dead wood around...they used pine poles for building garden steps/borders 15 yeas ago and most are getting soft.
Also the forestry is sometimes badly cleared when felling,so in some blocks there is a lot of dead wood

There is plenty of dead wood around...they used pine poles for building garden steps/borders 15 yeas ago and most are getting soft.
Also the forestry is sometimes badly cleared when felling,so in some blocks there is a lot of dead wood

Dead wood is good! It feeds lots of invertebrates, including handsome beetles like this one. Everybody who cuts down a tree should leave at least some pieces of wood to decay naturally.

Heaps of logs of various sizes make nooks and crannies for many creatures.

The current teaching on forestry is to leave standing and fallen deadwood, but this isn't always followed in conifer plantation as it can be a source of disease. We have seen hornets round the woods so they must be nesting in a tree somewhere, usually in a hole in deadwood.

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011Posts: 3369Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

they are ok if you leave em alone, sharing a territory or working in theirs can upset them a bit .

when i built a winter home ( in summer ) the " locals " were a bit tetchy at first, nearly 2 decades on i still have scars from the 5 stings to the leg .
we got on after their initial fury but whatever the literature says they have a poke nastier than bee or wasp .

learning to live with them includes learning when to run at least 25 meters ( away from their nest )

once they get to know you they seem mostly ok unless surprised or confused .

Definitely worth watching out for! Sightings call for removal of all host trees for something like a mile radius

The hornets I'm most familiar with here are "bald faced" AKA "white face" that make the classic paper nest on a tree limb (or house soffit) with only one entrance at the bottom. They're quite aggressive. Similar to the type of hornet you're talking about?

On one of my preferred walks (lots of tasty wild mushrooms throughout the year) I pass by a white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) tree with feral honeybees living in it's hollow cavity. Always fun to see if they've survived the winter or not, and to ponder if the cedar helps to keep out wax moth.

With constant vigilance, to date all infestations have been contained, but it is certainly a worry, as are other potential pests and diseases. We are currently suffering from Chelara ash die back in out woods. We are hoping that a good proportion of the trees will survive, as they are self set and variable, but we are pretty sure we will lose some unfortunately.